Coolest caravans and kit: a gadget lover's guide

After drooling over all the lovely motorhomes available in our recent blog, we thought we’d take a look at the best and coolest of the new caravans about. And the best kit, of which there is so much lovely stuff to save up for (because of course we’ve been saving very, very hard).

We already know you can poo in a box on the road, but now, with the help of those canny Swiss you can carry your entire outdoor room in a box as well. This dinky invention lets you bring a motorhome with you in your car boot, so you can cook, take a shower and sleep anywhere you want (we don’t recommend setting it up in the car park after last orders though, however much it seems to have been designed for that purpose). This nifty setup travels with you in your car and uses an electric cable to hook up to your car battery so you can shower and cook on the road – but do stop the car first.

If you’re able to invest in a caravan to tow behind the car instead, the market has moved way beyond basic white square boxes in a fairly generic shape and size which were most of what was available in recent decades. Nothing wrong with an old styler of course – and you can call it 'vintage' now if you want to annoy your teenagers – but oh, the tourers available nowadays. There are funky little T@B globule trailers and teardrop caravans and trailers , perfect in looks, functionality and practicality if you haven’t got the means to store or tow a full-sized vehicle. And there’s one in development by Teardrop Caravans called the Tardis as well! Think how much you can annoy your mates, and again, your teenagers, by lurching about Doctorlike, going 'Ooo eee OOO...ooo eee OOOO' every time you open the door, and saying in astounded tones 'But it’s so much bigger on the inside!' It’s geek heaven.

Apart from the the TARDIS (Ooo eee OOO...ooo eee OOOO), one of our absolute favourite styles of caravan is the restored gypsy type now available , which you can buy already done up to the nines or as a basic model to paint how you like. I’ve wanted one of these ever since reading Enid Blyton’s Five Go Off In A Caravan when I was about six, and indeed Ms Blyton’s characters and their erstwhile adventures are pretty much to blame for my wanderlust as a whole. These caravans are mainly geared as statics rather than tourers, although some owners are getting full use out of them by utilising them as a ‘studio’ in the back garden. What a much more lovely way than a shed to get a bit of space from the other half to fart and snore, I mean, work, in. We like.

Back to pooing in a box, sorry, cool camping stuff, and no blog on the subject would be complete without mentioning hammocks , an essential piece of kit even for rainy Britain and one where you can at least pretend you’re in the Caribbean whether you’re touring with a motorhome, teardrop caravan, Swiss Box Room or even utilising a gypsy caravan on a site or in your garden (trees generally needed). There’s also the Firesteel , again from those canny Swiss, which lets you light a fire pretty much anywhere (Hermione Granger, eat your heart out), swish camping grills , a hand espresso machine (genius, and possibly a relationship saver) and a host of other gadgets and gizmos available which you can use whether you’re hitting the road with a leaky tent or an RV motorhome.

In fact, just like camping and caravanning itself, there really are no limits in what you want to take with you on the road. What are you waiting for?